IUPUI Basketball Coach Seeks To Raise 40,000 Pairs of Shoes for Impoverished Kids
IUPUI Basketball Coach Ron Hunter will stride onto the gymnasium floor on January 24 as the Jaguars take to the court to battle Oakland barefoot. He hopes many of the IUPUI students attending the Jaguars basketball game will be shoeless as well.
By coaching shoeless, and having students barefoot, Hunter hopes to draw attention to impoverished children around the world who have no shoes and an organization that's trying to do something about it.
Beyond focusing attention on the plight of children who have so little, Hunter has set a personal goal of raising 40,000 pairs of shoes.
Hunter is supporting the efforts of Samaritan's Feet, a charitable organization that wants to put 10 million pairs of shoes on children's feet around the world in 10 years. He has met the founder of the organization, Emmanuel (Manny) Ohonme, who at the age of nine, was given his first pair of tennis shoes in Nigeria by a visitor from Wisconsin. Until that moment, Ohonme had never owned a pair of shoes. Ohonme went on to play basketball at the University of North Dakota (Lake Region) and a career as an executive with an American technology company before founding Samaritan's Feet in 2003. To date, the organization has raised more than 500,000 pairs of shoes.
Hunter's goal is tied to Dr. Martin Luther King. "I want to honor his life by standing for the children around the world who don't have a voice. I have always looked up to Dr. Martin Luther King and what he stood for. This year is the 40th anniversary of his death and I want to honor him by raising 40,000 pairs of shoes for children throughout the world. There are hundreds of millions of children who don't have shoes. They suffer from diseases, infection and many other ailments because they don't have shoes to wear. Needless to say, they can't play sports without shoes."
Hunter asks those attending the game to help raise awareness with their bare feet, and if they are able, to donate a new pair of shoes or donate money to the cause. Visitors to the Samaritan Feet website, http://www.samaritansfeet.org/ can click on a link that allows them to purchase a pair of shoes.
When Hunter reaches his goal, he plans to deliver the shoes to Africa.
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